Woman Skips Round of Chemo to Help Cancer Research

July 30, 2014 -- A biomedical researcher with an unusually aggressive form of breast cancer has taken an extraordinary step to "immortalize" her cancer cells.

Kimberly L. Koss, PhD, 57, skipped standard presurgical chemotherapy in an effort to grow pure versions of the cells removed after her mastectomy.

Chemotherapy would have damaged the cancer cells and made them less likely to live on in lab cultures, which is a rare scientific achievement. But chemotherapy also might have boosted Koss’ chances of survival.

"She is very brave and self-sacrificing," Keith Jones, PhD, says in a press statement. Jones is leading the research team culturing the cells. He is chair of the Department of Molecular Pharmacology and Therapeutics at the Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine.

"I think we can unlock the secrets of these deadly cells," Koss says in the statement. "I have a daughter and three granddaughters. I hope they never get this disease. But if they do, new treatments could be their salvation, as well as the salvation of many other women."

A Tale of Two Women

Koss, who recently retired from the University of Cincinnati, has an especially aggressive case of triple-negative breast cancer, which is hard to treat, even in less severe cases. Triple-negative tumors don’t respond to some standard medications. Ironically, the very aggressiveness that threatens Koss' life also makes her cells good candidates to multiply in cell cultures.

"Dr. Koss' tumor is highly invasive and measured abnormally high” for growth, Jones says in an e-mail to Medscape Medical News. "This means that her cells undergo cell division rapidly. This is a characteristic of cancer cells that have been successfully grown in culture in the past."

Most cancer cells are not as aggressive as Koss', and thus cannot continue to reproduce outside the body in the less hospitable host of a lab culture. Cancer cell lines have been used for decades in research, but were little known outside of laboratories until a book about them became a bestseller. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot, described the genesis, long life, and wide use of the now famous HeLa cell line.